September 18, 2008

Rt. 66 gas station, Evanston mansion on endangered list

The last intact Route 66 filling station in Chicago, an Evanston mansion where the nation’s 30th vice president once lived and a one-room school house in southwest suburban Orland Township are on this year’s list of endangered buildings in the Chicago region, which also laments the disappearance of large, artistic neon signs.

Landmarks Illinois, a non-profit preservation group, just released its seventh annual list of what it says are significant historical buildings that are in danger of demolition or substantial alteration.

Among them is the Castle Car Wash, 3801 W. Ogden Ave., which was built in 1925 as Murphy’s Filling Station and is the last historically intact filling station along the now-mythic Route 66, according to the Landmarks Illinois report. The castlelike structure, which is vacant and deteriorating, is now owned by a towing company, the report says.

The Charles G. Dawes House in Evanston, where Calvin Coolidge’s vice president once lived, has been closed since April.

Dawes bequeathed his 1894 home at 225 Greenwood St. to Northwestern University, which closed the building—one of the only in Chicagoland with an intact 19th century interior—after inspectors found minor fire code violations. University officials have said $4 million in repairs are needed before the home, which housed the Evanston History Center, can completely reopen.

Near southwest suburban Orland Park, the Yunker School at 14299 S. Wolf Rd. is threatened by encroaching strip malls and other development, including a planned widening of 143rd Street, according to the report. The school’s interior has been renovated, but the exterior, which includes a cupola housing a school bell, has been preserved.

Ten other structures, including a run-down Frank Lloyd Wright house threatened with demolition, Chicago’s first YWCA, an airport hangar and two hospital buildings designed by Bertrand Goldberg also made the endangered list.

The William F. Ross House in north suburban Glencoe is part of Ravine Bluffs, a six-home development designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1915, according to the report. It has been vacant for 2 years, has fallen into disrepair, and is up for sale "as is," according to the report. If it were demolished, it would be the first intact Wright home to be torn down in more than 30 years, according to the report.

The Prentice Women’s Hospital, 333 E. Superior St., Chicago, is the best-known of modernist architect Bertrand Goldberg’s many hospitals, according to the report. Its four clover-shaped, linked towers sit atop a five-story glass-and-steel podium. The building, completed in 1975, is owned by Northwestern University, which plans to develop the site for a medical research center, either reusing the building or possibly tearing it down, according to the report.

Several buildings at the Elgin Mental Health Center, including two designed by Goldberg and another that is believed to be the oldest masonry barn in Kane County, sit on land that its owner plans to sell—meaning the buildings could be demolished, according to the report. Built between 1966 and 1967, a laundry building and a circular surgical building designed by Goldberg are threatened, as is the 19th century brick horse barn, the report says.

The first YWCA building in Chicago, which went up in 1894 at 830 S. Michigan Ave., has been vacant for nearly 30 years, according to the report. It was last used as a hotel in the 1970s, is believed to be in poor structural condition and is continuing to deteriorate. The city is in court with the building’s owner over code and safety violations, the report says.

What’s now known as the Park Subdivision in Glenview was built in the 1890s by the Swedenborgian Church of New Jerusalem, consisting of a church on 10 acres with buildable lots for its members, according to the report. The first mayor of Glenview built a house there. The church has stated that it can no longer afford to pay taxes on the homes, according to the report. One home, at 59 Park Drive, was demolished in 2005 to make way for a new house.

Neon advertising like the "Z Frank" auto dealer near Western and Peterson Avenues and the "Stars Motel" sign near Lincoln and Kedzie Avenues are examples of highly ornamental signs that may disappear—like the "monumental" Magikist red lips signs scattered around area expressways—once the businesses they advertise close, according to the report. Preservationists can urge local officials to preserve their community’s best signs, the report recommends.

The David C. Cook Publishing Co., built in 1901 at 850 N. Grove Ave. in Elgin for Cook’s religious publishing business, now called Cook Communications Ministries, is located in an area along the Fox River that Elgin would like to see redeveloped, according to the report. Residents fear the Classical Revival-style complex will be demolished, the report says.

The Harper Theater buildings—a theater and a two-story commercial building at Harper Avenue and 53rd Street—were purchased by the University of Chicago in 2002, according to the report. A university-hired contractor developed a preservation plan that would have made it a complex with retail, restaurant and office space, but that plan was scrapped. The property is located in the 53rd Street tax-increment-finance district and, because the university owns adjoining properties, could result in a "large-scale" demolition of the entire site, the report says.

The Fine Arts Building Annex, a narrow, six-story building designed by Andrew Rebori to house a heating plant for the Fine Arts Building, 410 S. Michigan Ave., is an architecturally significant structure now owned by Roosevelt University, which is planning to build a dormitory on the site, according to the report.

Hangar 1 at Chicago Executive Airport in Wheeling is one of the oldest airport buildings in the region, according to the report. Its last tenant moved out in July and airport officials plan to demolish the building and build a new, four-hangar structure with restaurant, offices and exhibition space for the airport’s history, the report says.

Comments

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As I wrote in one of the Farnsworth House threads, there are a lot of buildings & structures that the preservationists want saved that have no business being saved!

The Z Frank sign?
The Stars Motel sign?

Are you people &%$#ing kidding me??!!

I live near there, I've gone past them thousands of times.
They are landmarks only in the minds of the loons in the preservation movement!

And that is why I call them Loony!

Tell me?
Who's going to pay for the endless upkeep of the signs?
The property owner?
Are they still going to be a Z Frank & Stars Motel signs?
Or will the property owner get to change the names on it?
Are they going to stick the bill with the taxpayers?
Actually they will, because landmark designation will give the owners a tax break, making the rest of us to pick up the costs of government!

And a hangar at Pal-Waukee? [I refuse to use that ludicrous new name]
Again, are they nuts?
This isn't Hangar One at Moffett Field in San Jose, which is an absolutely magnificent & gigantic structure built for dirigibles, this is just an old utilitarian hangar.

But since it's old, it must be saved according to the loons!
And once again, they will waste their time on such little regarded, minor buildings & structures, instead of saving worthwhile ones!

The only thing on the list worth saving is the Dawes Mansion in Evanston. Period!

If the loons want to save any of the rest, get stupid rich people to buy them & move them to another location, don't make the rest of us pay for your crackpot wishes & dreams!
Let them buy a section of mostly vacant land on the West or South Sides near to the L & turn it into a museum of old buildings & charge admission.

I'll add some more:
I also agree that none of Bert Goldberg's buildings on this list should be saved. While round buildings enclose the most space with the least material, they are extremely impractical in real life. No one other than Goldberg was as obsessed over that shape.
No one ever built another Marina City, cool looking from the outside, but pie shaped apartments are ridiculous, I've been in them! If that's landmarked, wait for the fight when the condo board starts replacing the windows. Not one window in the building opens, not one! You want fresh air, you open the one & only door in each section!

If Northwestern Hospital can't find a use for Prentice, then flatten it. It wasn't a good enough layout to be rehabbed by them & they built a new one. I'm waiting for the loons to put the Wyler Pavilion at University of Chicago Hospital on the list. What a falling apart wreck the outside of this brutalist atrocity is. I'm sure that's on the loons list for next year!

The car castle could easily be disassembled & moved to a location, if & only if an actual use could be found for it. And of course someone rich & stupid to pay for it. Like Great America.

The signs were built to last maybe 30 years. They are now approaching 60. They will soon rust away & fall down. The giant "CHICAGO" sign on the theater had to be replaced with an aluminum replica a few years ago. They use enormous amounts of electricity, who pays for it. Z Frank is practically gone as a dealership, they've leased out most their buildings to other dealers for 20 years. They're now in what was a Pontiac dealership Frank bought out. The sign was also for Pontiac originally. That stretch of Western is a ghost town most of the time. Everyone just drives right by without a second glance.

And the Dawes Mansion is right on the lake, next to a park. Nobody is going to build anything there but houses if it goes down. Dawes was an important figure of his day & Evanston deserves an historical society, you'd think that some of the wealthy people that live in the lakefront mansions & the large estates of NW Evanston could pony up a few bucks for this.
Maybe Evanston should give into the developer of the proposed Fountain Square high rise if he pays to rehab the Dawes building.

Everyone at the idiotically named Landmarks Illinois needs to be replaced with sane, logical people.
They are totally discrediting the need to preserve buildings that are truly historic when they waste their time, my time & my money on junk like most of these are!

I think that it's a little out of line to describe anything as being without architectural or historical merit or people as loons because they see something in a structure that someone else doesn't.

I give a great deal of credit to the folks at Landmarks Illinois for staking out a bold position on buildings that many would look at as old, obsolete or ugly.

I attended a function they held on "recent past" buildings, those built after 1930 and before 1970 and have developed a real appreciation for them. I've often been troubled by the fact that landmarks regulations are designed to protect the look of history rather than its substance. That's why I like the buildings on this list - Rt. 66 filling stations, the neon signs. They're constructs that capture a particular way of thinking about the world.

Sorry Andy, but you didn't read my comments in detail.
I wrote in the first one: "And that is why I call them Loony!

Tell me?
Who's going to pay for the endless upkeep of the signs?
The property owner?
Are they still going to be a Z Frank & Stars Motel signs?
Or will the property owner get to change the names on it?"

Z Frank is the fourth name on that sign. It started out as Public Pontiac, then Peoples Pontiac, then C. James Pontiac & now Z Frank.
What happens when there's yet another name or does the business have to maintain a sign designed for a 50 year lifespan forever?

I said it before & I guess it must be repeated, the landmarks people are loons & they are destroying their own cause by supporting the preservation of giant advertising ephemera! Even if it's ephemera that last for over 50 years, it's still ephemeral!